3 Easy Deep Linking Tactics for Your Mobile Website

Curious how to best start using deep links? Your own mobile website is an ideal place to start. Here are 3 easy deep linking tactics, complete with video examples. These strategies will get you started with leveraging deep links on your mobile web pages quickly in the ways that matter most.

Keep reading to find out why your own mobile web pages are such a great place to start with deep linking and implement these 3 proven steps.

Turn Mobile Web Searches Into App Downloads

As a savvy marketer, you’re already using a combination of SEO and marketing to drive people to your mobile website. And of course you’ve placed a call to action (CTA) on each of your landing pages to drive downloads. But what happens after one of your visitors clicks on such a CTA? After you’ve worked so hard to bring someone to your site, how likely are they to download your app as a result – and keep using it after they’ve opened it for the first time?

Deep links are the magic trick to ensure that hard work on your website wasn’t wasted. With deep links, you can make it as easy as possible for your visitors to download your app if they don’t already have it, or to open it as easily as possible. This is because deep links automatically detect whether your app is already on the user’s device, and if not, to which app store to route the user.

In both cases, deep links also enable you to show your users exactly the content you want them to see when they open the app, based on their activity beforehand. That increases engagement and conversions.

And of course, deep links enable you attribute each click to its source for organic, non-paid channels. This means you can know which organic channels and campaigns are most successful – and optimize your marketing as a result.

Find out how to benefit in detail from these crucial features by implementing the simple deep linking tactics described below.

The 3 Essential Deep Linking Tactics

1. Analyze Your Audience

To begin with, use a web analytics platform such as Google Analytics to find the top ten mobile web pages in your site that drive the most organic traffic on mobile phones and tablets. Organic traffic is traffic from non-paid channels such as email, SMS, social media, the web and mobile web.

This top ten list will most probably include your homepage and other key parts of your site, such as your product tour pages. You might also find that particular pieces of content marketing rank highly.

Once you’ve determined your top ten, create a deep link for each app download CTA on each of these pages. Make sure to define the user flow for each deep link – in other words, what happens once a user clicks on the deep link depending on their characteristics.

2. Drive Your Audience to Your App

Another easy way to benefit from deep links is to drive mobile web users who arrive on our site to a special landing page. In this video example from the ecommerce community Wanelo, a user finds an item through Google. Clicking on the search results takes the user to Wanelo’s site, which immediately shows the user an interstitial ad. That interstitial prompts the user to continue their activities inside Wanelo’s app.

Alternatively, you can deep link the user directly to the product or content screen inside the app. See the video below for an example of how Yelp immediately links a user from a search result straight into the Yelp app.

However, if the user does not have the app installed, drive the user to a landing page that prompts her to download the app. Sophisticated deep links such as Yozio’s will automatically detect if a user does not have your app installed already. The deep links will then route the user to the correct app store as a result, where they can easily download the app.

What’s more, with deferred deep linking, the user will see exactly the information you want them to see when they open the app – even if they have never downloaded the app before.

3. Experiment and Optimize

Now that you have some essential deep linking tactics in place, it’s time to optimize them for your unique audience and product. In order to achieve that, first make sure you determine your goals for deep linking, and therefore for your experiments.

Here are some examples of common goals:

Increase transactions across the mobile web and app

Increase active engagement in the app such as screens viewed, opens, and time in app

Increase purchase volume

Once you’ve settled on the goals for which you want to optimize, it’s time to design your tests. Some ideas for testing the mobile web to app workflow include:

Testing an interstitial ad against a banner on a mobile web page

Testing different designs of the interstitial and the banner

Testing different product or content visuals on the interstitial or banner

Testing the language and messaging

Showing the interstitial or banner only if the user already has the app installed, as detected by the deep link

Changing when the interstitial or banner is shown based on the number of visits to your site

Taking Deep Linking Tactics to the Next Level

Want to learn even more deep linking tactics, how to get started with organic growth, and get practical growth hacking tips? Download our free ebook now!